All is a lie: love and mind not;
Dream while desires are sobbing;
Offer to wounds thou canst bind not
Thy heart that stays not its throbbing.

Swift burns love to the ember:
Give all thy heart to thy dreaming,
Desiring, and loving; remember,
Life is vain and a seeming.

Be proud with a pride beyond taming;
If sadness thou have, do not show it;
Love, like a king, purples flaming;
And, being not God, be a poet.

Love life's weariness leavens;
Naught beside it is real;
Life is the flash in black heavens;
We see but in dreams the ideal.

Passion alone the abysses
Lights, while we grope up the rifted
Slopes; our spirits it kisses,
Ere into the deeps we are drifted.

Let the light that is wrapped in thee flare then:
Torches are warm from their burning;
Remember the coffin where men
All must to dust be returning.

The hole still beside us is gaping:
Ere its dizziness steams up and takes thee,
Let flames be thy spirit's draping,
And with love, dream, and longing slake thee.